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<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"><span class="dropcap">T</span>here is no longer even the illusion of a free press in Russia—not after yesterday, when the Kremlin </span><a href="http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/19805" style="line-height: 1.538em;">posted a decree</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> on its website announcing the liquidation of </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">RIA Novosti</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">, the leading state news agency. “The move,” the news service </span><a href="http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131209/185390572/Russia-Announces-State-Owned-Media-Overhaul.html" style="line-height: 1.538em;">wrote</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> in its own account of the story, “is the latest in a series of shifts in Russia’s news landscape, which appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.” </span></p>
<p>That “tightening,” which intensified when Russian President Vladimir Putin returned to power last year and immediately set about silencing any form of opposition to his notoriously crooked government, has reached a fever pitch in the months leading up to Russia’s hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi this February. The country and the games have come under increasing international scrutiny and criticism: First, in the wake of the Kremlin’s passage, this past June, of a trifecta of draconian anti-LGBT laws disguised as measures for child protection, and then by the failure of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to enforce its own charter—which, as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=498404440252766&amp;set=a.468774879882389.1073741824.334208360005709&amp;type=1&amp;theater">this helpful image</a> from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BoycottSochi2014">Boycott Sochi 2014</a> reminds us, states that "any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement.” </p>
<p>All of which places new pressure on NBC Universal, the primary American broadcaster of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, to decide whether it’s going to go down in history as an organ of the free press or as a collaborator in the Kremlin’s and the IOC’s conspiracies of silence. </p>
<p>So far, option two has been well ahead. NBC’s decision earlier this fall to hire Thomas Roberts and Johnny Weir, two bright white upper-class gay men with matching husbands, to serve as <strike>apologists</strike> commentators during Sochi was just the latest in a long string of feints by the network to appear gay-friendly while accommodating a homophobic regime. NBC paid $4 billion dollars for the rights to cover the Olympics from 2014 through 2020, and it’ll be damned if it’s going to do anything that might hurt its bottom line. </p>
<p>Like mentioning to the more than 200 million Olympic viewers expected in America alone that the backdrop to all of Sochi’s bobsledding and figure skating, thanks to the country’s anti-LGBT laws, is a political landscape reminiscent of Nuremberg-era Germany. One in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are being reduced to a status eerily reminiscent of Jews in the days before the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Corruptors of children. Polluters of Russia’s pure bloodline. Threats to the state.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote">NBC has been dodging attempts from activists to hold them accountable since the laws were enacted.</span> A <a href="http://www.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/ChadGriffin_NBCUniversal_07242013.pdf">letter</a> <span style="line-height: 1.538em;">from the gay lobbying group Human Rights Campaign’s president asking NBC to include news of Russia's human-rights violations alongside their standard Olympics coverage elicited a mealy-mouthed response from the network, which said it would “provide coverage of Russia's anti-gay laws if the controversial measures surface as an issue during the upcoming Winter Olympics.” As though the fact that Neo-Nazis keep luring gay men to hotel rooms by baiting them online, then kidnapping and torturing them and </span><a href="http://americablog.com/2013/07/russian-vigilantes-kidnapping-beating-young-gays.html" style="line-height: 1.538em;">posting</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> their videos</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> online isn’t an issue at all so long as no queers are actually forced to drink their own urine in front of NBC’s cameras during the snowboarding finals.</span></p>
<p>Still, it was harder and harder in the months that followed to pretend that nothing was happening in Russia. What with the gay torture videos and Putin’s declaration of martial law: He’s <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/23/214897119/russia-bans-protests-at-site-of-sochi-winter-games">banned</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> all protests, marches, and public gatherings in Sochi for the duration of the Olympics. </span></p>
<p>Plus the IOC issuing, every few weeks, yet another statement saying that it had been reassured by the Kremlin that everyone was welcome at the games. NBC’s LGBT employees were clearly freaked out to the point the network felt compelled to <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/nbc-reassures-gay-employees-sochi-trip-203439600.html">send out a memo</a> promising that it would do all it could to protect folks working in Sochi.</p>
<p>So NBC, in a moment of unparalleled cynicism, decided to hire Roberts and Weir to be their Gays. Because there’s nothing like the sight of two privileged gay white men being paid to run around Russia with camera crews following them everywhere to reassure the average American viewer that no atrocities are being committed against local LGBT citizens. “NBC’s strategy,” as Duncan Osborne, a member of Queer Nation, notes, “is to cast doubt that things are as bad in Russia as we say they are.”</p>
<p>Witness last month’s visit to Moscow by Roberts of MSNBC, the scab who cheerfully hosted Donald Trump’s Miss Universe contest after Bravo’s Andy Cohen bravely declined, <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/andy-cohen-boycotting-miss-universe-606655">declaring</a> that Russia’s “discriminatory policies make it unsafe for the gays who live there and gays coming to work or visit." What a Debbie Downer! </p>
<p>Roberts, by contrast, clearly believes, per the op-ed he <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/why-i’m-going-russia-despite-anti-gay-laws-0">posted</a> prior his trip, that making a lot of money to appear at carefully pre-screened locations in Russia with a security detail is the same thing as being “courageous” or “carrying a message of hope” to the country’s oppressed LGBT community. Once in Moscow, he duly <a href="http://www.today.com/news/thomas-roberts-i-havent-faced-anti-gay-discrimination-russia-8C11562786">reported</a> that he, personally, hadn’t “run into any discrimination.” Kind of like during the Beijing Olympics, where, strangely, no non-Chinese press reported being the targets of political repression. Go figure.</p>
<p>NBC’s “pink-washing” strategy seemed to be working.</p>
<p>But then came Johnny Weir’s breakout performance last week at a Barnard College forum on the moral responsibilities of athletes at the 2014 Sochi games. The former team USA Olympic figure skater, a talented crowd favorite whose enthusiasm for all things Russian extends to speaking the language and marrying first-generation Russian-American Victor Voronov, is also notorious for shooting his mouth off. In less time than it takes to say “Pokerface,” he l<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmzpCzQiGFM">aid waste</a> to NBC’s careful, Nice Non-Controversial Gays strategy and set the gay blogs buzzing. He also <a href="http://queernationny.org/post/68900322830/for-immediate-release-nbcs-johnny-weir-dismisses">insulted</a> members of Queer Nation, <em>the</em> LGBT activist group that’s been most effective in <a href="http://en.ria.ru/world/20130801/182517544.html">pressuring</a> individual and corporate supporters of the Kremlin’s anti-LGBT witch-hunt. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/nyregion/gay-rights-protest-greets-opening-night-at-the-met.html">Not good</a>.</p>
<p>In addition to disparaging the millions of activists who oppose Russia’s anti-LGBT laws the world over as "idiots like the ones outside tonight, dumping vodka in the street,” Weir referred to the most notorious of the new laws, the so-called “propaganda” law that forbids virtually all public mention of homosexuality as a threat to children, as "no anal sex in front of libraries.” It’s a flippant reference to the widely broadcast <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42XOcb-N6Z8">footage</a> of the late Alexei Davydov being hauled off, as the first person arrested under the law, for standing in front of the Moscow Children's Library with a sign that read, "Gay is normal." </p>
<p>It’s hard to say what’s worse. The fact that Weir also referred to his experiences in Russia without any evident understanding of the difference between his position and that of the average Russian queer, saying: “I’ve never had a bad experience in Russia, not gotten called a fag or beat up.” Or his lack of concern regarding his own willed ignorance: “I only see the rosy, golden side. I choose to see Russia in an arrogant, selfish way.”</p>
<p>Within hours of Weir’s outburst and gay journalist Andy Humm’s <a href="http://gaycitynews.com/johnny-weir-say-gay-protestors-idiots/">write up</a> in <em>Gay City News</em>, Weir had a piece in Virginia’s <em>Fall River News</em> where he <a href="http://fcnp.com/2013/12/03/johnnys-world-foot-in-mouth/">apologized</a> for his inflammatory remarks. Followed by a <a href="http://www.deadline.com/2013/12/johnny-weir-making-headlines-and-headache-for-nbc/">statement</a> from NBC saying it supported his apology. Followed hours later by Weir telling a fan, on videotape, that he wanted to be the first person to perform oral sex in space. <a href="http://www.tmz.com/2013/12/04/johnny-weir-oral-sex-pioneer-fellatio/">No comment from NBC</a> at this time.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote">The misadventures and misconceptions of Roberts, Weir, and NBC would be farcical if the lives of real flesh and blood people weren’t at stake.</span> Also if Putin wasn’t putting a hit on Russia’s closest thing to an independent media outlet and replacing it with Soviet style pseudo news. But he is.</p>
<p>Effective immediately, the Kremlin’s decree transfers all of <em>RIA Novosti</em>’s property to a new conglomerate called Russia Today, which will be headed by Dmitry Kiselyov, a Putin propagandist best known in the west for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=2NlayCtujlU">video</a> of his appearance in front of a live audience last year, where he stated, in the run-up to the enactment of the anti-LGBT laws:</p>
<blockquote><p>I believe it is not enough to impose fines on gays for engaging in the propaganda of homosexuality among adolescents. We need to ban them from donating blood and sperm, and if they die in car accidents, we need to bury their hearts in the ground or burn them as they are unsuitable for the aiding of anyone's life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a Russophile pal commented, “This is like CNN being folded into FOX, and Rush Limbaugh being made head of the new network.”</p>
<p>So the tendency of Roberts, Weir, and NBC to downplay what’s happening in Russia, which currently <a href="http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html">ranks</a> 148th in the Reporters Without Borders Freedom Index, behind Libya, Angola, and Afghanistan, and to fool themselves that their presence alone somehow changes the increasingly dangerous on-the-ground reality of Russian queers, hews towards the sinister. In addition to making them complicit with both the IOC’s and the Kremlin’s silencing of the truth, it aligns them the Kremlin’s media spin on the law, which has always been that those outside of the country don’t understand it and are “overreacting.” </p>
<p>Russia’s ambassador to Canada was very eager to <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2013/12/07/russian-ambassador-says-countrys-anti-gay-laws-misunderstood">spread that message</a> just the other day, and to glom on to the IOC’s spin: First, that somehow holding the Olympics in Russia, and failing to uphold the part of the IOC charter that compels the IOC to "fight against" and "take action against" what the charter calls "discrimination of any kind” isn't a political statement, but protesting either of those actions is. (Just yesterday, new IOC Chair Thomas Bach of Germany, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/winter-olympics/25304255">reminded</a> athletes that they can be stripped of their medals for any signs of political protest). And second, that Russia’s anti-LGBT laws, and all that matters about them, can be judged by whether visiting LGBT athletes, spectators, and press are harassed in Sochi over the course of two weeks and in front of the world’s cameras. </p>
<p>The IOC, of all entities, should know better, having been through this before. In 1935, Chancellor Hitler graciously acquiesced to then-IOC Chair Count Henri Baillet-Latour’s <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40E15F6395B1B728DDDAE0894D9415B858FF1D3">request</a> that all anti-Semitic signage be taken down for the duration of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Bach, of all people, should have a keen memory for what happened after those games were over and the international community left. And be eager to avoid a repeat.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 14:51:12 +0000219395 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinSticking It to Sochi: Russian LGBT Activists on What Workshttp://prospect.org/article/sticking-it-sochi-russian-lgbt-activists-what-works-0
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>here’s no sugarcoating what’s happening in Russia in the days since the Duma and Prime minister Vladimir Putin passed its anti-gay laws earlier this summer. In a jaw-dropping <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=2NlayCtujlU" style="line-height: 1.538em;">video</a> that Moscow-based journalist and longtime LGBT activist Masha Gessen <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gessen?fref=ts" style="line-height: 1.538em;">posted</a> to her Facebook page over the weekend, Dmitry Kiselev, anchorman and deputy director of VGTRK, the Russian state broadcast holding company—in short, a top representative of the Kremlin’s media machine—makes the following statement:</p>
<blockquote><p>I believe it is not enough to impose fines on gays for engaging in the propaganda of homosexuality among adolescents. We need to ban them from donating blood and sperm, and if they die in car accidents, we need to bury their hearts in the ground or burn them as they are unsuitable for the aiding of anyone's life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kiselev’s audience claps and cheers.</p>
<p>So let’s be very clear, very fast about what will and won’t matter to Putin and his cronies when it comes to protesting. There’s no point in pretending that marching around the Olympic Village in Sochi this winter wearing rainbow pins will make a jot of difference, even on the medal-awards platform. “The Kremlin,” Russian LGBT activist Alexei Davydov tells me through an interpreter, “has taken a page from the Middle Ages. Incapable of solving the country's pressing problems, and with Putin's ratings falling, the Kremlin has decided to consolidate society through fear—and to this purpose is engaged in a search for enemies both internal and external. Gays have been chosen as these victims.”</p>
<p>Davydov should know. In this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42XOcb-N6Z8">video</a>, he very carefully breaks the new gay “propaganda” law and becomes its first test case by standing on the steps of a library with a sign that reads “Gay is normal.” The police haul him off, along with three other allies. What will happen to him when he’s tried is anyone’s guess. But Gessen—who, along with <span style="line-height: 1.538em;">what one St. Petersburg legislator called her “perverted family” are the </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/11/anti-gay-laws-russia" style="line-height: 1.538em;">primary targets</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> of a proposed law that will remove Russian children from their LGBT parents—</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">urges supporters abroad “to keep reminding the Kremlin that the world is watching. We need media coverage of existing cases.”</span></p>
<p>That’s our real responsibility in dealing with a country where a solid 74 percent of citizens <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/05/russias-anti-gay-laws-in-line-with-publics-views-on-homosexuality/" style="line-height: 1.538em;">don’t think homosexuality should be accepted by society</a>—not kidding ourselves that it will make a difference if we bring our loved ones to Sochi, chat with the people next to us at the bobsled track, and hold our children up for the cameras. Russia’s decision-makers couldn’t care less, and its media machine will simply spin those hearts-and-minds gestures into symbols of Western decadence. “Anything addressed to the public,” Gessen says, “risks playing into the hand of the people stirring up the homophobia.”</p>
<p>There’s certainly no point—I’m looking at you, <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/08/obama-no-sochi-olympics-boycott-170298.html">President Obama</a> and <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130810/olympics-british-pm-rejects-sochi-boycott-over-anti-gay-law">British Prime Minister Cameron</a>—in refusing to boycott the games because we don’t want to penalize the athletes who have trained so long and hard. That legitimate concern could be addressed by simply pressing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to <a href="http://www.olympic.org/Documents/olympic_charter_en.pdf">follow its own charter</a>, which calls for removing the Olympic Games from any nation that does not satisfy its own requirements for equal rights and tolerance. Start working with the one senior IOC member from Norway who <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=19925567">already shares this view</a> to help bring others around to it. I’m sure Vancouver’s snowboarding ramps are still in fine repair.</p>
<p>Think long and hard before you evoke the spectacle of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—thus far the model for the West’s approach to Putin—or argue that winning LGBT athletes will “show 'em” in Sochi. In 1935—as in 2013—the International Olympics Committee was keen to <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=19925567">pretend</a> that sporting events could wash a clearly politicized setting of its politics, or wipe a dirty city clean. IOC chair Count Henri Baillet-Latour was content with Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40E15F6395B1B728DDDAE0894D9415B858FF1D3">promise</a> that anti-Semitic placards would be taken down during the Olympic games the next year.</p>
<p>In this Faustian bargain, Hitler hid the most obvious signs of what would later become his Final Solution. Jesse Owens, the allegedly “inferior” Negro, kicked Aryan butt on the track and came home with four gold medals (to a country where FDR refused to host him at the White House for fear of losing the Southern vote in the upcoming election). And then, once the international community had left, Hitler and his willing minions invaded neighboring countries and incinerated every fucking Jew, queer, or dissenter they could get their hands on.</p>
<p>If President Obama has “no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them,” Davydov suggests he demonstrate that by instructing Secretary of State John Kerry to put Elena Mizulina and Vitaly Milonov—the officials most responsible for Russia’s new laws—on the visa ban. The former is the Duma deputy responsible for the federal law banning gay "propaganda" to minors and for the law banning foreign adoptions of Russian orphans by gays and lesbians; the latter is the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly deputy responsible for the law banning gay "propaganda" to minors in St. Petersburg. (<a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/put-elena-mizulina-and-vitaly-milonov-visa-ban-list-their-role-creating-russias-ban-gay-propaganda/mYMFcF9W">Here’s a petition that asks Obama to do precisely that</a>.) </p>
<p><span class="pullquote">Essentially, Davydov is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act">proposing</a> to extend the Magnitzky Act to cover homophobes.</span> This 2012 law punishes 18 Russian officials thought to be complicit in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after investigating fraud involving Russian officials, by prohibiting their entrance into the United States or use of its banking system. “If you forbade persons who advance fascist discrimination laws, such as deputies Mizulin and Milonova, entry into civilized countries,” says Davydov, “I assure you there would be few who would be ready to advance similar laws.”</p>
<p>There’s plenty that the rest of us could do as well. Russian LGBT activists have been saying for some time now that there’s no point in aiming at so small a target as the Kremlin’s heart, especially when its wallet presents a larger, more tender object. First, RUSA LGBT <a href="http://rusalgbt.com">asked</a> allies to boycott Sochi and all Russian products, and press for withdrawal of corporate sponsorship from the games. Then 34 LGBT Russian activists (including Davydov and Gessen) echoed that call in <a href="http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fprospect.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Frussianactivistsboycottstatement.pdf">a letter released by Queer Nation</a>.</p>
<p>So let’s keep dumping Russian vodka into the streets and outside of the Russian consulate in New York City. Let’s <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/08/10/photos-hundredreds-of-londoners-straight-and-gay-protest-against-russias-anti-gay-laws/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=tGTPl0Gbcs8">keep marching in London</a>. Sign the Change.org petition that calls for Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Samsung, Procter &amp; Gamble, and Visa to <a href="https://www.change.org/petitions/stand-against-russia-s-brutal-crackdown-on-gay-rights-urge-winter-olympics-2014-sponsors-to-condemn-anti-gay-laws#share" style="line-height: 1.538em;">condemn</a> the laws and pull their sponsorship from the Sochi Olympic games (it’s now surpassed 100,00 signatures).</p>
<p>And keep taking actions like the one where activists confronted Russia’s U.N. ambassador with a petition signed by 340,000 supporters <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/gay-rights-activists-confront-russias-un-ambassador-demanding-elimination-of-anti-gay-laws/2013/08/08/0cd274f4-009b-11e3-8294-0ee5075b840d_story.html">urging</a> world leaders to help eliminate anti-gay laws in Russia ahead of the Sochi games. “Every time that Putin, or other government officials, or representatives of Russian big business or cultural institutions step foot into the West,” says Gessen, “s/he should have a hellish experience. They should encounter protests and questions about these laws everywhere they turn.” Let’s take a cue from Amsterdam, where public officials <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/03/27/amsterdam-to-fly-rainbow-flag-for-russian-president-putins-visit-to-the-capital/">put their money where their mouth was</a>: The rainbow flag flew above the capitol during Putin’s April visit, while yellow tape reading “Homophobia-free zone” cordoned off streets where thousands protested.</p>
<p>We have a chance to do things differently in Sochi than we did in Berlin. Let’s start with skipping the part where we appease a dictator, and instead give a damn about what’s happening beyond the scrubbed streets of the Olympic Village. Let’s lose the naïve notion that the wins of a few remarkable LGBT athletes will make any difference to the mobs of Neo-Nazi vigilantes luring gay teens with online ads, then kidnapping and torturing them—a process they like to <a href="http://americablog.com/2013/08/russian-gay-kidnap-boy-torture-video.html">videotape and post online for their admirers to enjoy</a>. Let’s focus on forms of protest that will have an impact in locations beyond Sochi—actions that will continue to <a href="http://queernationny.org/post/57939125523/harvey-fierstein-and-queer-nation-to-ioc-two-weeks-is">impede</a> the progress of Putin’s Final Solution even once the crowds and the cameras leave.</p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:20:01 +0000218463 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinThe Military's Suicide Scandalhttp://prospect.org/article/militarys-suicide-scandal
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>What a drag it’s been these past few weeks to watch the military brass—those kings of accountability, at least when it comes to <em>other people</em>’s behavior—huffing and bluffing and outright lying about what they knew and when they knew it. <a href="http://prospect.org/article/military-cant-handle-truth">First we had to endure the sight of them gaping</a> over the news that the sexual-violence crisis they’ve done nothing to squelch since the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-military-sexual-assault-20130517,0,6255956.story">assault of 83 women and seven men at the Tailhook Air Force convention</a> in 1991 has worsened. Now those same Pentagon officials are shocked, simply shocked, by the military’s spiking suicide rates, despite the fact that those numbers, which have been rising steadily for the past 12 years, come from their own reporting system (and some claim are still an undercount).</p>
<p>The only thing worse than the Pentagon’s faux surprise has been the complicity of news organizations willing to echo its talking points. Shame on <em>The New York Times</em> for last week’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/us/baffling-rise-in-suicides-plagues-us-military.html?hp&amp;_r=1&amp;">“Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues the U.S. Military.”</a> Disturbing, yes. But there’s nothing “baffling” about the news that more active-duty troops killed themselves in 2012 than were killed in combat in Afghanistan in the same year, and that <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/244328/whats-behind-the-us-militarys-climbing-suicide-rate">the number of suicides has doubled</a> from a decade ago.</p>
<p>As the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—Congress’s nonpartisan investigative wing—and a variety of media outlets attest, there’s been only one thing better documented than the military’s unwillingness over the past 25 years to throw any real muscle into ending its culture of widespread sexual assault. And that’s the military’s unwillingness to acknowledge the prevalence of post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health issues plaguing service members and to enact serious reforms aimed at curbing and treating mental illness in its ranks. The military’s systemic incompetence on this issue continues despite years of analysis and criticism, not only from service member advocacy organizations, but also from within the Beltway.</p>
<p>Consider the drubbing administered to both the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Veterans Administration (VA) by the GAO last November. The <a href="http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-5">report</a> cited “a lack of leadership, oversight, resources, and collaboration” as contributing to the military’s “inability” to “address a host of problems for wounded, ill, and injured servicemembers as they navigate through the recovery care continuum.” All of those issues came under greater congressional scrutiny in the wake of the public uproar that followed the Washington Post’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/pulitzer2008_splash.html">investigative series</a> on conditions at Walter Reed Army Military Center, the VA’s flagship in D.C. The GAO concluded that the military had utterly failed to rectify the conditions the series had cited: Mold-stained and cockroach-filled outpatient facilities; byzantine paperwork mazes and overlong wait times to receive care; inadequate resources for soldiers with diagnoses of PTSD.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that Walter Reed has the largest psychiatric department in the Army, the <em>Post</em>’s reporters found it still lacked “enough psychiatrists and clinicians to properly treat the growing number of soldiers returning with combat stress.” Earlier that year, the head of psychiatry had “sent out an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/17/AR2007061701351_pf.html">‘SOS’ memo</a> desperately seeking more clinical help. ... Individual therapy with a trained clinician, a key element in recovery from PTSD, is infrequent, and targeted group therapy is offered only twice a week.”</p>
<p>But surely these are problems that money can solve. So did the $2.7 billion dollars that Congress poured into the Pentagon’s maw in the three years following the <em>Post</em>’s series do anything to change the way that the DOD and VA address treatment and research for “the signature wounds of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq”—psychological health (PH) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) treatment? That’s hard to say, because the GAO’s January 2012 <a href="http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-154">report</a> found <a href="http://www.military.com/military-report/report-looks-at-ptsd-tbi-programs">“that DOD programs supporting P.H. and TBI treatment and research are poorly coordinated, and the department has failed to provide reliable and comprehensive data on how more than $2.7 billion in funds for such programs have been used in recent years.”</a> In other words, there’s no way of knowing what, if anything, went into patient care.</p>
<p>There is, by the way, no good reason why the DOD or VA should have been caught flat-footed by the waves of veterans that flooded their facilities in 2006<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101201613_pf.html">, more than a third of whom reported symptoms of stress or other mental disorders as they returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.</a> At least two of its own top people—the chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed and the Executive Director of the VA’s National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—had <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa040603?hits=20&amp;andorexactfulltext=and&amp;FIRSTINDEX=0&amp;searchid=1&amp;excludeflag=TWEEK_element&amp;where=fulltext&amp;resourcetype=HWCIT&amp;searchterm=PTSD&amp;sortspec=Score%2Bdesc%2BPUBDATE_SORTDATE%2Bdesc&amp;">published</a> <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe048129">pieces</a> in a 2004 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine predicting the crisis.</p>
<p>That same year the GAO published a report titled, “<a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d041069.pdf">More Information Needed to Determine If VA Can Meet an Increase in Demand for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Services,”</a> which it followed five months later with another report, this one unsubtly titled, “VA <em>Should Expedite</em> the Implementation of Recommendations Needed to Improve Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Services” (emphasis mine). In it, the GAO notes the VA’s lack of full compliance with any of the 24 recommendations in its earlier report, including 10 that were carryovers from the very first recommendations issued by the Special Committee on PTSD within the VA nearly 20 years before.</p>
<p>Clearly a military in the midst of a recruiting crisis, and with no end to the war in sight, was not looking closely for signs of mental illness in prospective and active service members. Nor was it willing to acknowledge what it found, especially if that meant removing another warm body from an over-stretched unit, letting the public see the negative consequences of an already unpopular war, or paying for treatment or compensation.</p>
<p>The same month the GAO’s follow-up report was released, in February 2005, Army Spec. Jeffrey Henthorn, a young father and third-generation soldier, killed himself in Balad, Iraq. The M-16 he used was so powerful that "fragments of his skull pierced the barracks ceiling." According to the Hartford Courant, which featured Henthorn’s story in a series called <a href="http://www.courant.com/news/special-reports/hc-mentallyunfit-sg,0,4649032.storygallery">“Mentally Unfit to Fight,”</a> he "had been sent back to Iraq for a second tour even though his superiors knew he was unstable and had threatened suicide at least twice, according to Army investigative reports and interviews.”</p>
<p>Henthorn was 1 of <a href="http://www.courant.com/news/special-reports/hc-unfitjeffrey0514.artmay14,0,4086631,full.story">22 soldiers who killed themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan in 2005</a>— nearly double the rate of the year before. <a href="http://www.courant.com/news/special-reports/hc-unfitzoloft0516.artmay16,0,7531255.story">Three others</a> whose stories were featured had been kept in combat and given potent psychotropic medications—with little supervision and despite the potential of these drugs to increase suicidality.</p>
<p>So enough with the military’s alleged bafflement over the rising service member suicide rates. If they really want to address the issue, here are three places they could start. First, stop impeding the rapid transfer of veterans from the DOD system to the VA system. Under the current ridiculous system, even though a service-member’s paper file is transferred automatically from the former to the latter, but she cannot access VA services until she enrolls online or in person. The DOD and VA have already wasted a billion dollars worth of taxpayer money ineffectually trying to combine their data systems according to a <a href="http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-669">June 2012 GAO report</a>. So the time has come to recruit the first random kid who walks through MITs long corridor to take the task on: surely she could do better.</p>
<p>Next, comply with Veterans Health Administration (VHA) policy, which requires that all first-time patients requesting mental health services receive an initial evaluation within 24 hours, and a comprehensive diagnostic appointment within two weeks. As <em>Stars and Stripes</em> <a href="http://www.stripes.com/investigation-blasts-va-over-wait-times-for-mental-health-care-1.175340">reported</a>, the Inspector General already busted the VHA in April 2012 for saying that 95 percent of its new patients were seen in that time frame, when in fact the average wait time is closer to two months. Hire more staff. And curb the habit the military has developed over the past decade of spending more than $4.5 billion <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/03/military.over.medication/index.html">handing out</a> antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety drugs. That money could buy a lot of one-on-one therapy and support groups. Consider actually treating the service members in the military’s care rather than dosing them into oblivion.</p>
<p>Finally, remove the systemic disincentives that have for decades discouraged service members from coming forward: Being separated from buddies; kept for weeks or months of evaluation, and prevented, by the letter that goes into a reporting service-member’s file, from any career advancement in the military or any future employment as a police officer, a firefighter, or an emergency medical technician. The military could also demonstrate its belief in the core value of addressing mental health issues by integrating it into the <a href="http://www.usma.edu/dmi/SiteAssets/SitePages/Sandhurst%20Competition/Soldiers_Common_Tasks.pdf">Soldier’s Manual of Common Tasks</a>. If recognizing and addressing signs of mental distress is meant to be as natural and vital a task as performing first aid to restore breathing or pulse, then let it be taught right alongside the other rudiments of basic training.</p>
<p>Let’s face it: it takes a potent combination of media attention and public outrage along with a strong dose of presidential and congressional will to exert the kind of pressure it takes to force the military to actually change its entrenched culture. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/opinion/the-pentagons-sexual-assault-crisis.html?smid=fb-share">The DOD’s latest sexual assault report</a> might have died in the 24/7 news cycle if the release of the study revealing a new spike in those numbers hadn’t been followed by multiple arrests of some of the same (male) officers in charge of ending sexual assault for ... sexual assault.</p>
<p>It’s plenty exciting—now that the president has finally spent some political capital and sat down with Hagel and the brass—to see the branches of government start pressing the military to clean out its Augean Stable as far as sexual assault goes. But what will it take, if not the suicides of hundreds of men and women, to warrant the same kind of attention for the military’s mental-health crisis?</p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 20 May 2013 11:43:28 +0000217754 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinThe Military Can't Handle the Truthhttp://prospect.org/article/military-cant-handle-truth
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he real scandal this week around military sexual violence isn’t the <a href="http://www.sapr.mil/media/pdf/reports/Department_of_Defense_Fiscal_Year_2011_Annual_Report_on_Sexual_Assault_in_the_Military.pdf">release</a> of the latest in a string of Department of Defense (DOD) reports showing stunning levels of sexual assault—hell, even the DOD estimates 26,000 actual incidents compared with the 3,374 <em>reported</em> incidents. It’s not the fact that this year <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/opinion/next-steps-on-military-sexual-assaults.html?smid=fb-share&amp;_r=0&amp;pagewanted=print">marks</a> the third in a row to show an increase in sexual violence (under law, DOD has <a href="http://www.sapr.mil/index.php/annual-reports">published</a> them yearly since 2004), or that the latest report “found that among the one-third of women who reported sexual-assault allegations to a military authority, <em>62 percent suffered retaliation for speaking up.</em>” It’s not even the <a href="http://nation.time.com/2013/05/09/fear-of-reprisal-the-quiet-accomplice-in-the-militarys-sexual-assault-epidemic/">arrest</a>, two days before the report came out, of the officer in charge of sexual-assault prevention programs for the Air Force on sexual battery charges. </p>
<p>The real scandal is the degree to which the military has been allowed to continue punting on addressing sexual violence, despite knowing about the widespread sexual abuse of service members, most but certainly not all of them women, for over two decades now, as documented by a staggering number of reports, lawsuits (<a href="http://www.protectourdefenders.com/military-sexual-assault-litigations/">five since 2011 alone by a single attorney</a>), and scandals. </p>
<p>As early as 1988, researcher Melanie Martindale from the Defense Manpower Data Center in Arlington, Virginia <a href="http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/336/Wolfe-et-al-1998.pdf">found</a> that 5 percent of female respondents “described attempted or completed sexual assault during military service over an 18-month period,” 15 percent reported “pressure for sexual favors,” and another 38 percent describing “unwanted touching.” As early as 2007, even the Pentagon’s own statistics <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3797346&amp;page=1&amp;singlePage=true%23.UYwmuJV6O0s">showed</a> that women, at one in three, were at twice the risk for sexual assault in the military as they were in the civilian population.</p>
<p>The military’s flagrant negligence has been abetted by a series of leaders, congresses, and administrations that have allowed the military to continue doing almost nothing to protect its service members from sexual assault. That is, unless you count the brass’s obsession, until the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” with protecting all of those poor straight guys in the shower from the gaze of suspected perverts in the ranks by discharging gay translators of Arabic in droves.</p>
<p>This culture of allowing the military to “police their own” despite plentiful evidence that this makes about as much sense as <strike>allowing the financial industry to regulate itself</strike> appointing Colonel Sanders head of poultry safety is in evidence as early as 1991. That’s when the Tailhook scandal broke, bringing the issue of large-scale military sexual violence to public attention. More than 100 Navy and Marine Corps officers at a convention sexually assaulted 83 women and seven men. In response, the Navy led an investigation so weak that that even the Pentagon <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1992-09-25/news/mn-1182_1_investigative-service">condemned it</a>. But in the final analysis, acting Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe, despite having accepted the resignation of two admirals cited in the report for failing to interview senior officials who clearly had witnessed the assaults, and having reassigned a third, said he continued to have “complete confidence” in Navy Undersecretary J. Daniel Howard. In fact, O’Keefe decided to keep Howard on as the Navy's second in command “despite the inspector general's finding that Howard failed to force the two organizations investigating the scandal to coordinate their work.”</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, there’s no record of the military making any real effort to reduce sexual violence in the years following Tailhook. A Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) report on Military Sexual Trauma originally due in March 2001 was released in 2005. A year later, the Defense Department's sexual-assault report <a href="http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/336/">showed</a> a 73 percent increase from 2004—when 1,700 incidents were filed—to 2006, when 2,947 incidents were reported. Clearly, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3797346&amp;page=1&amp;singlePage=true%23.UYwmuJV6O0s">word was out</a>. The military’s interpretation in these situations is always that reporting is up because it’s done such a good job of encouraging service members to come forward. It’s more likely that numbers were up because any fool could see, from the military’s non-response to earlier reports and scandals, that it didn’t give a damn on either the individual or institutional level. Although the VA had been authorized since the early '90s to create sexual-trauma counseling centers, the DOD only began calling for proposals around 2007. That same year the VA finally <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3797346&amp;page=1&amp;singlePage=true%23.UYwmuJV6O0s">opened its first facility</a> to provide counseling exclusively to female veterans who have been the victims of sexual abuse or assault. </p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Yet even in treatment settings, the military fails to protect service members from sexual assault.</span> A June 2011 General Accounting Office <a href="http://veterans.house.gov/prepared-statement/prepared-statement-randall-b-williamson-director-health-care-us-government-0">report</a> nails the VA for failing to take proper precautions to prevent sexual assaults even against women housed in mental-health programs at VA medical facilities. Of the nearly 300 sexual assaults reported to the VA police, most weren’t passed up the chain of command to VA leadership officials or the VA Office of the Inspector General, including two-thirds of the rape allegations. Close-circuit cameras intended to actively monitor areas were inadequately monitored, alarm systems malfunctioned, and VA police were understaffed. The just-released annual survey on sexual harassment and violence at military service academies <a href="http://www.sapr.mil/media/pdf/reports/FINAL_APY_11-12_MSA_Report.pdf">reports</a> that in the 12 months prior to the survey, 12.4 percent of women and 2 percent of men had experienced unwanted sexual contact, while 51 percent of women and 10 percent of men had experienced sexual harassment. </p>
<p>The same military bureaucracy that fails to protect service members even in military academies, let alone in the theater of war, on bases, or in its own treatment facilities may be shafting them later when, as veterans, they file disability compensation claims related to <a href="http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/pages/military-sexual-trauma-general.asp">military sexual trauma</a> (MST). How those claims have been assessed and compensated (or denied) has been a mystery until now. The VA is under no obligation to explain its reasoning to veterans, and it only agreed to release previously withheld records of those claims a few weeks ago in <a href="http://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/veterans-department-agrees-release-previously-withheld-records-military-rape-and">response to several years worth of vigorous litigation</a> by the ACLU on behalf of the Service Women’s Action Network. The Department of Defense is still stalling on a similar Freedom of Information Act request.</p>
<p>Will the military’s culture of virtually unchallenged sexual violence change now, in the wake of this scandal-ridden week, followed by a virtual army of DOD spokeswomen, plus Valerie Jarrett, the Obama administration's public-engagement spokesperson, being waved around like white flags to prove that Something Is Being Done? That doesn’t seem likely given the so-called “high-level meeting” Jarrett <a href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/05/8529878/gillibrand-attend-high-level-white-house-meeting-sexual-assault">led</a> earlier this week: It may have included nine women senators but neither Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel nor a single senior member of the DOD or VA felt compelled to attend. (White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was more on target than he may have intended when he said the meeting "reflects the level of concern that you heard from the president.”)</p>
<p>Representative Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California who, like Senator Kristin Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, has <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/champion-of-effort-to-increase-awareness-of-military-sexual-assault-questions-if-change-is-possible.html">introduced legislation</a> that would move prosecutions out of the hands of the military and end the power of senior commanders to overturn a verdict, doesn’t sound hopeful. “I want to believe this is a tipping point,” she said, “but I guess I’ve been around politics too long.”</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 10 May 2013 13:15:41 +0000217690 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinThe Letter CUNY Should Have Written to Tony Kushnerhttp://prospect.org/article/letter-cuny-should-have-written-tony-kushner
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>Monday night, the Executive Committee of the City University of New York's Board of Trustees did its best to stem an endless flow of bad publicity and buck-passing in the wake of its earlier decision to first <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/nyregion/cuny-blocks-honor-for-tony-kushner.html?scp=3&amp;sq=tony%20kushner&amp;st=cse">grant and then rescind</a> an honorary degree to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner. The committee <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/nyregion/in-reversal-cuny-votes-to-honor-tony-kushner.html?_r=2">rescinded</a> the rescission and granted the degree to Kushner, but that doesn't mean all is well. </p>
<p>The two figures missing from Monday's meeting were -- not coincidentally, I think -- the two CUNY officers central to the Kushner debacle. Notably absent was trustee Jeffrey S. Wisenfeld, whose vehement objection to Kushner, whom he characterized as an opponent and critic of Israel, met with no resistance from his peers. (Several days after his initial outburst, Wisenfeld <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/nyregion/opponent-of-honor-for-tony-kushner-criticizes-palestinians.html">topped</a> himself by telling a <i>New York Times</i> reporter that certain Palestinians were not human.) </p>
<p>Also missing was Benno C. Schmidt, the current chairman of the CUNY Board and a former president of Yale, who voted to table Kushner's award rather than devote one iota of energy to defending him against Wisenfeld. Schmidt just <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/nyregion/in-reversal-cuny-votes-to-honor-tony-kushner.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss">happened</a> to be out of the country and did not vote. </p>
<p>Matthew Goldstein, the chancellor of the university, who presided over Monday's meeting and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/nyregion/in-reversal-cuny-votes-to-honor-tony-kushner.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss">was criticized</a> in a <i>New York Times</i> editorial just days before for not speaking out "forcefully on this issue," embodied the spirit of the whole nasty shindig by seizing on the occasion to try to blame someone else for his failure of leadership: </p>
<blockquote><p>"I'm not sure why the appropriate people didn't chime in at that time," Dr. Goldstein said. Dr. Goldstein, <em>who was present at that meeting</em>, (emphasis mine) said the presidents of the various colleges are generally expected to address specific questions. </p></blockquote>
<p>Monday's meeting was one long, failed exercise in saving face. It convinced no one and settled virtually none of the issues that led to the debacle in the first place, namely the board's utter failure to stand up against one pontificating bully or for the absent artist they had intended to honor, or for free speech, followed by a week's worth of mumbling and bumbling and blaming everyone but themselves. The only person who will come out of it unscathed is Kushner. He's carried himself like a <em>mensch</em> through the whole ordeal, first writing the board members a <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/54643560/Letter-to-CUNY-Trustees-05-04-11">brilliant letter</a> that pins them wriggling to the wall for their cowardice, then leaving the door open for CUNY to apologize and beg him to come be the undisputed hero of its graduation. </p>
<p>Imagine how much better this would all be if only CUNY's mucky-mucks had written Kushner a frank letter admitting their mistake and showing that they'd actually learned something from the experience. A letter like this: </p>
<p>Dear Tony Kushner, </p>
<p>We, the officers of CUNY, are very sorry for all that we have put you through. By first offering and then rescinding your honorary degree, we have dishonored you, our students, and our community, who we are supposed to lead by example. We think we've finally got ourselves straightened out. Will you please accept our apology and our honorary degree? </p>
<p>We would like to think we've learned from our errors, and we will do our best not to repeat them. </p>
<p>We should have anticipated that there might be some objections to our awarding you this honorary degree. There was, after all, a similar Israel and Jewish loyalty debate when Brandeis honored you in 2006 -- and it <a href="http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2006/05/08/hardline-pro-israel-groups-demands-brandeis-rescind-tony-kushner-honorary-degree/ ">held firm.</a> Had we done just that little bit of research, we could have been better prepared for inevitable objections and defended your right to free expression. Instead, we were blindsided when one of our members, who has given much to our school and whose views on Israel were well known, demanded your ouster. </p>
<p>We froze. As you said in your May 5 letter to us, the podcast of the meeting sounded "like a scramble to dispense with the whole business." We were cowardly. We hastily <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/54643560/Letter-to-CUNY-Trustees-05-04-11 ">tabled</a> your nomination, approved the other candidates, and adjourned. None of us wanted to confront Wisenfeld and offend him or draw his wrath: That 's a very uncomfortable thing to do with any colleague, especially over such a volatile issue. No one was quite sure who should step up and lead. And frankly, not all of us had read your work. We had fallen into the bad old habit of rubber-stamping and reacting rather than thinking, discussing, and evaluating. </p>
<p>Going forward, we think you'll find us a smarter, braver body -- one that's working hard to respect differences among ourselves and within the CUNY community while upholding the core principles of free thought and speech. Please let us know if you will do us the honor of accepting a CUNY degree in appreciation of your remarkable body of work. </p>
<p>Sincerely, </p>
<p> (Signed by all of the CUNY board members, by board chair Schimdt, and by chancellor Goldstein) </p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 11 May 2011 14:45:34 +0000149352 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinGetting Away With Murder on Long Islandhttp://prospect.org/article/getting-away-murder-long-island
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <blockquote><p>"I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed," Mr. Ridgway said in his statement. "I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught."</p>
<p>-- <i>Gary Ridgway, the "Green River Killer," who admitted in 2003 to killing 48 women</i> (<a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/17171/the_truth_about_the_green_river_killer/">quoted</a> in Silja J.A. Talvi's Nov. 13, 2003 AlterNet story)</p>
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<p>A terrible story has been unraveling on Long Island since last December. That's when the remains of four bodies, disposed of in separate burlap bags 500 feet apart on a scant quarter-mile of beach, were identified as belonging to young women in their 20s who advertised themselves as escorts on Craigslist. Just weeks ago, six more victims were found nearby. </p>
<p>It's not yet clear whether one killer or multiple killers are responsible. No suspects have surfaced. But that's not what makes this story really tragic. Some of those 10 people might be alive today if it hadn't been for the lackluster response of law enforcement and the press coverage of the case -- much of it sensationalist and dehumanizing -- all because of the first victims' sex-worker status. </p>
<p>"There's a certain voyeurism in this kind of coverage -- a sense that you don't have to worry about violence because it only happens to these kinds of women," notes Melissa Gira Grant, a writer, activist, and former sex worker. Asked to select the worst recent example, she chose a <i>New York Daily News</i> cover that <a href="http://melissa.tumblr.com/post/4690823248/ny-daily-news-april-17-2011">read</a> "Hooker Slay Exclusive: Web of LI Sickos" and its accompanying inside <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/04/17/2011-04-17_internet_sex_forum_wanted_revenge_vs_long_island_hooker_later_murdered_dumped_in.html">story</a>, "Internet sex forum wanted 'revenge' vs. Long Island hooker later murdered, dumped in burial grounds." My own pick in the Asking For It category comes from WPIX, which <a href="http://www.wpix.com/wpix-did-li-serial-killer-rant-in-sex-chatroom-20110418,0,1216528.story">quotes</a> the neighbor of Amber Lynn Costello, one of the victims: "With the people she was hanging around with, who were coming here, it was obvious something was going to happen to her." Best Candid Moment goes to the neighbor National Public Radio <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/04/10/135296732/on-long-island-police-search-for-missing-woman">quotes</a> without comment who frets about the recent discovery of more unidentified bodies: "It could be more than just prostitutes." </p>
<p>This kind of press about the Long Island murders makes it possible to see how a man as sick as Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer, could feel so confident about getting away with murdering nearly 50 women. </p>
<p>Ridgway was only halfway right when he speculated that no one would care about his victims. Both in Green River and on Long Island, the problem wasn't that no one noticed the victim's disappearance or that the victims had no connection to family or friends. It's that, as <i>Newsweek</i> <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/17/terror-on-long-island.html">euphemizes</a>, "When people living in such precarious circumstances suddenly disappear, they are not necessarily the highest, immediate priority for the authorities." In short, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/nyregion/08bodies.html?_r=2&amp;partner=rss&amp;emc=rss">titles</a> like <i>The New York Times</i>' April 7 "Prostitutes' Disappearances Were Noticed Only When the First Bodies Were Found" are true only if the subject of "noticed" is the police. </p>
<p>Of the four young women whose remains were discovered in December -- Megan Waterman, 22; Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27 -- three of their families had filed missing persons' reports with the police. Brainerd-Barnes' sister was told, "Your sister ran away and doesn't care about anyone." The police traced calls to Barthelemy's sister, Amanda, from a man who claimed to have killed Melissa, but for some reason, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/17/terror-on-long-island.html">gave up</a> upon tracing the calls as far as cellular routers in mid-Manhattan. Mari Gilbert, the mother of a fifth young woman, Shannan, whose body has still not been found, frankly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/nyregion/08bodies.html?_r=2&amp;partner=rss&amp;emc=rss">states</a> that the press and public did not initially take her daughter's disappearance seriously. Shortly after her daughter's initial disappearance from a date with a john in a nearby gated community in May of 2010, police stopped searching. </p>
<p>In fact, the initial discovery of four bodies along Ocean Parkway off Giglo Beach in December 2010 wasn't part of an organized search: A lone officer out on a training exercise with his cadaver-sniffing dog stumbled upon them, and no attempts to further search the area took place until late March of 2011. It was then, when an entire police team combed the area, that they discovered six more sets of unidentified remains. That's when talk of yet another serial killer targeting women in the sex industry on Long Island began -- and when the press and public finally took notice. (The area has <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/17/terror-on-long-island.html">already served</a> as a stalking and burial ground for two such serial killers in the late 1980s and early 1990s.) Police found themselves in the national spotlight, squeezed on all sides by the press, public, advocates, and victims' families. Then the FBI, the Black Hawk helicopters, and the national press arrived. </p>
<p>For nearly a month since, the public has been subjected to a dazzling display of good intentions and limited understanding on the part of the police and press. When the law criminalizes sex work while the press treats "these women" as careless, sinful, titillating, or inconsequential "others" -- and never as daughters, sisters, mothers, or friends -- it forces women whose lives include transactional sex into more dangerous situations while rendering them less human in the eyes of those of us who work in less demonized professions. </p>
<p>Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/nyregion/08bodies.html?_r=2&amp;partner=rss&amp;emc=rss ">request</a> for sex workers to come forward with information related to the disappearance of colleagues is no doubt sincere. But casting police as the protectors of sex workers and <a href="http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/apr/13/sex-workers-reluctant-work-police-long-island-investigation/">reassuring the sex workers' community</a>, through a police spokesperson, that those who come forward "will only be arrested if they have been caught offering to have sex with a member of law enforcement or soliciting sex for money" is pretty cold comfort. Police may signify safety and protection to people whose activities aren't criminalized, but people involved in sex work are more likely to have experienced officers as predators and steer clear. As Grant <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/148099/hypocritical_legal_crusade_against_craigslist_will_not_solve_violence_against_sex_trafficking_victims?page=entire">notes</a>: </p>
<blockquote><p>In a <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1543759">University of California at San Francisco study</a> published in 2009, 22 percent of San Francisco adult female sex workers surveyed reported having police as paying customers. Fourteen percent were threatened with arrest if they did not have sex with a police officer.</p></blockquote>
<p>Audacia Ray, a former sex worker and program director of the Red Umbrella Project, is trying to bridge this gap in the form of a <a href="http://audaciaray.tumblr.com/post/4600948386/in-the-week-leading-up-to-december-17-2010-the">campaign</a> that calls for the Suffolk County authorities to offer amnesty for all prostitution-related offenses in the area until the killer is apprehended. It's a great idea as ideas go (a similar <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-421885/Prostitutes-urge-amnesty-police-amid-serial-killer-fears.html">campaign</a> was successful in the UK) but one that still requires sex workers to take considerable risks. Grant, who firmly supports the campaign notes, "The moment the killer is caught, any sex worker who came forward with information is likely still going to need to do sex work and will once more be a target for law enforcement." </p>
<p>The myth that the safety of sex workers lies in their taking better precautions or that sex work's dangers are inevitable perpetuates a blaming-the-victim model while ignoring the role that culture rather than nature plays in the equation. Dormer can <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/04/10/135296732/on-long-island-police-search-for-missing-woman">intone</a> all he likes that women in the escort business "should be careful with their contacts." But so long as sex work is broadly criminalized, women like the four whose bodies were found in his county will be driven to do their work in darker, more deserted, and more isolated places. They'll be forced to make decisions about whether their johns are safe quickly in order to get off the street, and loath to report the rapes, assaults, and robberies that are a routine part of their lives to the police. Fear of arrest will keep their friends from following the safety plans that so many sex workers put into place, which include bringing someone along on an "outcall" to wait outside the hotel or home or to call the police if they don't come back from a date at an agreed-upon time. (In another curious press moment, <i>Newsweek</i> <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/17/terror-on-long-island.html">describes</a> Amber Lynn Costello as "casting aside caution" the very paragraph before it describes the three-point safety plan that she and her roommate follow.) </p>
<p>"You always see victim blaming in lots of writing about women who have experienced violence, but it's so interesting how that plays out in writing about sex workers," says Ray. "When a reporter asked, 'What can sex workers do to prevent violence?' I said, 'Well, maybe people could not kill us.' On the one hand, we do precautions; on the other hand, we can't take responsibility for the way the world works." </p>
<p>Grant and Ray both emphasize that the best way to keep women safe is not finger wagging, police "protection," telling women to be safer, or urging women who currently make their living in the sex industry to accept low-paying "respectable" work. It's about offering genuinely viable economic alternatives to women who are trying to pay the rent and buy their kids birthday presents like the rest of us. "As much of a proponent as I am of decriminalizing prostitution," Grant says, "we still have to deal with the fact that economics are the driving force behind what you do and how much power you feel like you have to bargain for yourself. It's this larger question about economic justice." Adds Ray, "The reason the sex industry becomes an option for so many low-income people is because there's a lot of wage inequality. The only way you can make that much money is through the sex industry. You need to be able to offer people other options that pay just as well."</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:15:16 +0000149304 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinFrances Fox Piven: Still Tougher Than Glenn Beckhttp://prospect.org/article/frances-fox-piven-still-tougher-glenn-beck
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>You have to hand it to Fox News faux-populist Glenn Beck. If it weren't for him, Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, might not be doing today's <a href="http://www.fightbackteachin.org/index.html">National Teach-in on Austerity, Debt, Corporate Greed (and what YOU can do about it)</a> alongside Princeton University Center for African American studies professor <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/29/financial-crisis-economy">Cornel West</a> live from New York City's Judson Church. Nor would they have 200-plus campuses <a href="http://fightbackteachin.wufoo.com/reports/participating-campuses/ ">participating</a> in the livestream and teach-ins. </p>
<p>Piven is a legendary scholar and activist, but until this past year, that was true primarily in that small segment of the world familiar with her work on enfranchising the poor through welfare reform and voter registration. Enter Beck. In more than 50 broadcasts, he painted <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/157900/glenn-beck-targets-frances-fox-piven">Piven</a> and her late husband, Richard Cloward, as "masterminds of an overarching left-wing plot," held them "fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system," and referred to Piven as "the enemy of the Constitution" -- all this for a 1966 article on how to force reforms in the welfare system. </p>
<p>A wave of death threats against Piven followed. But also a <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/14/why_is_glenn_beck_obsessively_targeting">tide</a><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html"> of media</a> that threw the spotlight on Piven's <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/157900/glenn-beck-targets-frances-fox-piven">courage</a>, brilliance, and <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/158016/frances-fox-piven-way-tougher-glenn-beck">sheer moral and intellectual toughness</a> -- and that introduced her and her work to a whole new generation of activists. On a recent rainy morning, Piven took time out from a slew of last-minute preparations for the teach-in to answer some of my questions about its purpose, the state of the nation, and the difficulty of making either of two corporate-fed political parties responsible to the rest of us -- we the people. </p>
<p><b>The first thing that struck me about this teach-in you're doing was your use of the term "austerity," since I think of that as a Republican talking point. Why did you decide to adopt the term "austerity"?</b> </p>
<p>Well, we should have done it in quotes. It's false austerity. I think a lot of people have been persuaded the austerity is real, but what we want to show in the teach-in is that this has been manufactured by a combination of tax cuts for corporations and for the affluent and a continuing increase in expenditures that go to corporations and to banks and pharmaceutical companies, for-profit health-insurance companies. So the idea is to try to crack open the myth of austerity and show the revenue shortfalls are the result of an untenable amount of government money going out in the form of corporate subsidies and also the result of wholesale reconstruction of the American tax system, which in mid-20th-century America was a pretty progressive tax system. The marginal rate of taxes on the richest people was 91 percent. That has been entirely reconstructed. Now it's 30-something percent, and in any case, most corporations don't pay their taxes and most of the rich don't pay their taxes. </p>
<p><b>The old canard is that the Republicans are the party of the wealthy, while Democrats speak for the poor, working class, and middle class. So why does this situation appear to be as bad under Obama as under the Bush administration?</b> </p>
<p>Well, there's the Obama of the electoral campaign, and that Obama pays attention to his base, speaks the words that resonate with his base -- the words of change and the words of equality -- and promises to remedy the sharp inequalities and injustices of American public policy of the last 30 years. But then there's the Obama of governance, and that Obama pays much more attention to his Wall Street supporters and his corporate supporters. Now, I don't even blame Obama for that: That's his situation, and that's what he does. </p>
<p>But I think we have to change his situation, and that's what we're trying to do. Change his situation by adding momentum to what we hope is the sentiment emerging from his base -- and that his base includes poor people, minorities, students (very importantly, students) -- and a lot of working people, the "middle class," we say these days. And that base doesn't have any leverage excepting for that moment when the election is coming. And now the way it can gain leverage is through the protest movement. That's the way it's always been in American history, and it still is. So we're trying to add fire to the democratic forces of American politics by joining a new protest movement that we think may be emerging. For though they have not won in Wisconsin in the sense that the court is still reviewing the legislation that Scott Walker pushed through, they have won in another sense. They have stirred a lot of hope in the American public that have been hurt. </p>
<p><b>Everyone from journalist Thomas Frank to essayist Ellen Willis has taken a crack at this question. Why are people "voting against their interests"? How is it that "working class" people have been galvanized to argue vociferously for the right to be underpaid and overtaxed and have the social safety net shredded?</b> </p>
<p>Well, we live in a complicated society, and what government does and doesn't do is very hard to understand. It's even hard for people who do this for a living -- the academics who study public policy -- and there are many disagreements among them. Democracy depends on a degree of transparency. You're voting for people who occupy seats of power in government and will have a lot of influence over what government does. But in order for that to be effective, in order for the voters to be an effective element in a democracy, what government does has to be clear. The whole object of right-wing propaganda for 35 years now has been to make it unclear, to confuse, and that propaganda has grown steadily stronger and taken many forms. </p>
<p>One form has been the attack on the mainstream media so the mainstream media doesn't do what it's supposed to do. It doesn't illuminate the choices that are being made by governing officials because it's afraid of being called "liberal" and also because the mainstream media are themselves now owned by the largest corporations in the world. At the same time, another tack has grown in the propaganda war, and that's the tack of what some people call the fake populist movement. The Tea Party is the prime example of that now. In a way it is fake: It is a construction of well-funded political organizations and of people like the Koch brothers. But it also draws on things that are going on in people's minds, hearts, and bellies. </p>
<p><b>The Democrats' attitude toward their voters appears to be, "We're the best you've got. What are you going to do, vote Republican?" How do progressives manage to actually push the Democrats left? </b> </p>
<p>I think we can't if we stay within the boundaries of normal politics, if what we do is we pay a little attention to what's going on in the political realm and then just go to the polls. But sometimes insurgent movements arise -- they have periodically in American history -- which actually threaten to make the country ungovernable. The movement of striking workers, workers who sat down and who occupied plants in the 1930s, gave General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford no choice but to sign union contracts, and they gave FDR no choice but to throw his support behind the National Labor Relations Act. </p>
<p>That did not happen just because people went to the polls. That they went to the polls was of some importance because they were threatening with their militant, visible, dramatic actions. They were threatening to fracture the Democratic constituency. In a certain sense, we need Democrats in power because the Democratic Party is the party that is vulnerable to the force of movements, and the force of movements is the force that raises issues that threaten to divide Democratic constituencies so there's an interaction between electoral politics and protest politics. Without protest politics, that interaction doesn't happen, and democratic potentialities are not realized.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:15:10 +0000149275 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinPreserving the Triangle Factory Fire's Lessons, 100 Years Laterhttp://prospect.org/article/preserving-triangle-factory-fires-lessons-100-years-later
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>March 25 marks the 100th anniversary of the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that trapped and killed 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women, on the upper floors of a New York City sweatshop. It's a time to honor and mourn the Triangle's victims, commemorate the tragedy's importance as a turning point in the history of the American labor movement, and reaffirm the crucial role of unions and regulatory bodies in advancing worker rights. Both are taking a beating in America's 21st-century iteration of the Gilded Age, as industrialists (<a href="http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150167/rachel_maddow:_koch_brothers_'pop_up_in_every_scummy_political_scandal">hello, Koch brothers</a>) paired with the craven politicians who do their bidding (<a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/wisconsin-scott-walker-koch-brothers">greetings, Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Scott Brown, <i>et al.</i></a>) take another pass at ridding our country of all those nasty laws that protect consumers and workers, and cut into their bottom line. </p>
<p>It was unions -- led by the International Ladies' Garment Workers (now Workers United) in league with the Women's Trade Union League -- that began harnessing public outrage in the wake of the fire to demand the regulations regarding worker health, well-being, and safety that protect many workers to this day, whether or not they belong to a union. Think workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour workweek, weekends, holidays, sick pay, employee benefits, and safety standards. While you're at it, peruse <a href="http://www.seiu.org/2011/03/how-labor-reshaped-buildings-after-triangle.php">this excellent chart</a> from the Service Employees International Union that illustrates the many ways unions succeeded in making workplace buildings safer in the wake of the Triangle tragedy. These included pressuring legislators to mandate emergency exits, sprinkler systems, and maximum-occupancy laws. </p>
<p>And then think about how dangerously close America is to turning its back on Triangle's legacy because of this past decade's (mostly) Republican and corporate-led assault on regulatory bodies and policies. This is the very time when workers most need protection: As our country's recession deepens, unions have been eviscerated, and jobholders and job seekers have become more desperate. As one Harvard Business School lecturer memorably said about Harley Davidson's happy <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/economy/26earnings.html?ref=harleydavidsoninc">discovery</a> that reducing the number of employees has actually contributed to soaring profits, "Because of high unemployment, management is using its leverage to get more hours out of workers." </p>
<p>Yet the public seems increasingly to hate, envy, and blame unions and unionized workers. Perhaps the average Joe doesn't understand that unions helped to create most of the benefits that make his workplace bearable. Or maybe the very thing that makes people vulnerable also makes them envious. To riff off of H.L. Mencken's <a href="http://www.uuworld.org/2004/01/feature2.html">definition</a> of fundamentalism, it could be that the root of the average Jane's anti-union fervor is the terrible, pervasive fear that somewhere, someone is being adequately compensated and treated well. Or perhaps people really just don't understand the basics of state revenue generation and taxation. </p>
<p>Surely, it must be one of these, or some toxic mixture. How else to explain Gov. Walker's considerable success in demonizing public-sector unions and steamrolling anti-union legislation through the Legislature -- in Wisconsin, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22cronon.html?hp">birthplace of workers' compensation (1911), unemployment insurance (1932), and public-employee bargaining (1959)</a>, no less? Or the large number of people who swallow Walker's ridiculous claim that, in the wake of very real threats to the economy like the housing bust, the financial crisis, and the credit drought, compensating public workers is what's really eviscerating state budgets? (For a more likely explanation for the state's revenue shortfall, see Sally Kohn, who <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/10/watching-uproar-wisconsin-protests-time-remember-unions-make-lives-better/#ixzz1HNx5Fd6Z">notes</a> that "in Wisconsin, 60% of corporations making more than $1 million per year in revenues pay zero taxes. Zero.") </p>
<p>Destroying collective-bargaining power not only fails to resolve financial issues in Wisconsin and elsewhere; it also, as Triangle's example warns us, endangers workers. In 1909, two years before the fire, Triangle Shirtwaist factory workers walked out in protest over hazardous working conditions, low wages, and long hours. The owners agreed to modestly raise pay, but continued to deny the strikers collective-bargaining rights. Ultimately, poverty drove them back to the shop. Had the Triangle workers been able to negotiate regarding work conditions, they might have been able to address their concerns over the building's many, obvious hazards. Instead, their inability to hold out for more control over labor conditions cost them their lives. </p>
<p>When the fire broke out, the Triangle factory's workers found themselves in a deathtrap. As Celia Walker Friedman, one of the surviving workers recalled (read her statement <a href="http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/survivorInterviews/CeliaWalkerFriedman.html">here</a>), flames were already shooting up from the eighth-floor stairway by the time the women on the ninth floor even knew there was a fire. "[The] aisles were narrow and blocked by the chairs and baskets," and the door to the other stairway "was completely blocked by the big crates of blouses and goods." Friedman couldn't access the flimsy fire escape (and didn't know it had already collapsed). </p>
<p>Though the elevators stopped working almost immediately, people continued to fall into the shaft, pushed from behind by other frantic workers crowding the doors trying to escape, or throwing themselves at the center cable, hoping to slide to safety. Friedman, the only one to survive by doing this, was found under a pile of bodies at the bottom of the shaft when the firemen began removing the dead. </p>
<p>Now Gov. Walker is asking Wisconsin's public-sector employees to accept the same deal that the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory offered their workers 100 years ago: a little more money in exchange for being stripped of any right to demand better workplace conditions. </p>
<p>If you think that labor laws and safety conditions have improved too much for Triangle to happen again, consider a more recent historic event. The mine that collapsed in West Virginia last summer killed 29 miners in the worst mining tragedy in 4 decades. But it didn't have to happen, and it wouldn't have with more rigorous regulation and enforcement. The Massey-owned mine, according to <i>The New York Times</i>, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10westvirginia.html ">known to have had</a> "repeated problems with methane buildups." In fact, in the 15 months prior to the blast, the <i>Times</i> reported, "federal regulators had cited the mine eight times for 'substantial' violations relating to the mine's methane control plans, according to the records." Where was the Labor Department in all this? Trying to play catch-up after eight years of gutting by the Bush administration. Now President Barack Obama's secretary of labor, Hilda Solis -- the first serious candidate to get the job in the past decade -- is struggling with a huge backlog; an equivocal, business-friendly boss and Congress; and budget cuts that will undoubtedly continue to affect regulation and enforcement efforts. </p>
<p>At this crossroads in the American economy and labor, when so many of us are jobless; when deregulation forces have gained so much ground; when workers are increasingly being squeezed for more and given less; when corporate kings are more kingly than ever; and when unions are under attack, we need to look to the Triangle tragedy and its aftermath to remind us of the costs of compliance. History demonstrates that whenever workers are denied the ability to negotiate for their own safety and well-being, and whenever regulatory bodies and policies are defanged, tragedy follows. It's a lesson we learned at great human expense and forget at our peril.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:11:22 +0000149237 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinCongress Backpedals on Global HIV/AIDS Preventionhttp://prospect.org/article/congress-backpedals-global-hivaids-prevention-0
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>When it comes to women's health, a little political cowardice goes a long way. House Republicans, in their zeal to balance the budget in any way possible other than asking rich people and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, have proposed putting the one-quarter of 1 percent of the U.S. budget for global health on the chopping block. The Democratic leadership won't oppose these cuts or call them what they are: crowd-pleasing maneuvers that won't dent the deficit. And ultimately, it's HIV-positive women and children who will pay a disproportionate share of the price. </p>
<p>The human cost of Congress' theatrics is spelled out in an <a href="http://www.amfar.org/uploadedFiles/In_the_Community/Publications/Funding%20Rollback%20issue%20brief%20Nov%202010.pdf">issue brief</a> [PDF] from the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). HIV is the leading cause of death globally among women of reproductive age, and rollbacks to programs that prevent mother-to-child transmission could leave 32,560 more infants infected with HIV each year. Nearly half a million children affected by the HIV-related deaths of adults in their lives could lose their food, education, and livelihood assistance. Funding for AIDS treatment for over 315,000 HIV-positive people could be eliminated. </p>
<p>As if trying to soften the blow in advance, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator has already pledged to keep HIV-positive people on antiretroviral therapy (ART), which is absolutely the right thing to do from a human-rights perspective. Still, shifting diminished resources to treatment will, as Jirair Ratevosian, deputy director of public policy at amfAR notes, "mean even steeper cuts to existing and emerging prevention initiatives and critically needed care programs." </p>
<p>Which is where the effect on women doubles down. Keeping HIV-positive people on their ART is vital. But nearly three decades into the pandemic, women are still worthy of notice primarily as child-bearers to most funders and policy-makers -- and many nonprofit organizations as well. The attention and funding devoted to preventing mother-to-child transmission far exceeds all other programming for women. Already, too few resources go to preventing women from contracting HIV in the first place, a problem that will only worsen with Congress' proposed funding cuts. </p>
<p>The importance of maintaining and expanding prevention services for women should be obvious. According to the Joint United Nation Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), up to 70 percent of women worldwide have been <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8546655.stm">forced to have unprotected sex</a>. Young women are especially at risk for sexual assault; high percentages of girls <a href="http://www.pepfar.gov/press/2011/157860.htm">report</a> a coerced first sexual experience: 24 percent in Haiti, 25 percent in Uganda, and 63 percent in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Another study found that 52 percent of clients who sought post-rape care in Rwanda were under the age of 15, while 87 percent were under the age of 20. </p>
<p>With access to "morning after" ART, which can protect someone who has been exposed to HIV from contracting it, life might be different for Annah Irungu of Kenya. "I was gang-raped and hacked," said Irungu, speaking from Washington, D.C., where she was attending a two-day advocacy training hosted by the <a href="http://www.genderhealth.org/">Center for Health and Gender Equity</a> (CHANGE). "I have machete marks all over my body. I didn't know there was anything known as post-exposure prophylaxis. Had I known, I might not be positive today." But availability for that kind of preventative counseling and treatment will become even scarcer in the current funding climate. </p>
<p>If the budget deficit were truly at the heart of the current D.C. showdown, and if the U.S. truly wanted to bring down the cost of HIV prevention and treatment abroad, we could reconfigure current U.S. programming mandates to save costs and reflect best practices. For example, we could put pressure on pharmaceutical companies to <a href="http://cdnedge.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1407472.stm ">allow poor countries that have been hard hit by HIV to produce generic versions of their ART drugs</a>. We could stop forcing countries to allocate 50 percent of all U.S. funding for prevention to "ABC" programs that stress "Abstinence" and "Being faithful" before grudgingly admitting that using a "Condom" might be the best option for people who, despite our best efforts, still want to have extra-marital sex. That would be a better way of fulfilling our responsibility to women all over the globe whose primary risk of contracting HIV is marriage and the assumption of spousal fidelity. And it would loosen up a nice chunk of change for countries to spend on programs or prevention methods that seem more promising. They could, for example, put more funding toward developing <a href="http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/finally-some-good-news-women-world-aids-day">microbicides</a> that have performed well in recent trials instead of continuing to foist the burden of condom use on women. </p>
<p>"Family planning is a critical part of HIV and maternal health intervention," says Serra Sippel, the president of CHANGE. "It's not a political bargaining chip." But this lucid thought might not be able to penetrate the fog that surrounds the 112th Congress, which appears to consider no billionaire too insignificant to be favored, and no public health, education, or welfare program too vital to be spared. In honor of today being National Women and Girls AIDS Awareness Day, try calling them and telling them that anyway. Hey, someone around here needs to advocate for us.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:09:25 +0000149217 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinCounting the Transgender Communityhttp://prospect.org/article/counting-transgender-community-0
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p> Transgender people live with a bull's-eye on their back. Anyone who denies this fact -- so hard for some to swallow in the wake of recent victories on marriage equality and "don't ask, don't tell" for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people -- is due for a wake-up call. Today, the <a href="http://transequality.org/">National Center for Transgender Equality</a> (NCTE) and the <a href="http://www.thetaskforce.org/">National Gay and Lesbian Task Force</a> (NGLTF) released "Injustice at Every Turn," a <a href="http://www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/ntds">report</a> based on the results of what is by far the country's largest transgender discrimination survey to date -- with 6,450 participants to the next largest study's 700. </p>
<p>This is important. Currently most surveys -- including the census and epidemiological studies -- contain zero questions about sexual orientation, never mind gender identity and expression. The consequences of not being counted, of being invisible, is that no one knows who constitutes the transgender community, what its members experience, or what their challenges or needs are. The many costs to transgender people include the fact that they are allotted little if any funding or resources on the state or federal level. That's even true of resources spread within an LGB community that often forgets the "T." </p>
<p>The organizations responsible for the new survey are working to correct for that. As Mara Keisling, NCTE's executive director says, "A lot of people think the plural of anecdote is data, but that's not true. Some of what we got supported what we always assumed. Some of it is very new." She referred to the 41 percent of respondents who had attempted suicide as "the most shocking number in the report," noting, "That's 26 times the national average." It's higher even than rates among members of the military and people diagnosed with chronic depression. </p>
<p>The rest of the report's clear, cold numbers illuminate what happens when discrimination in everything from health care, employment, housing, and education is pervasive -- and often, perfectly legal. </p>
<p>Respondents were four to five times more likely than the general population to live in extreme poverty, with an annual household income of less than $10,000 at all levels of educational attainment. Those surveyed were twice as likely to be unemployed; 26 percent had lost a job because they were transgender, though if you factor in not being hired in the first place or denied a promotion, that number rises to 47 percent. A full 90 percent of respondents reported harassment or other mistreatment in the workplace. The statistics for transgender and gender nonconforming people grow even worse when race is factored in, with transgender people of color faring worse than white participants across the board. But there was some good news, too: Nearly 80 percent of respondents reported feeling more comfortable at work and their performances improving after transitioning. </p>
<p>There's a direct link between being able to earn an above-board living, having stable housing, and staying alive. The results of facing continual job discrimination, combined with being refused housing (19 percent) or being evicted (11 percent), and having a nearly 1-in-5 chance of being homeless at some point, are not only painful, stressful, or unhealthy but catastrophic. Those who have been fired due to anti-transgender bias are far more likely to enter the underground economy, where sex work and drug sales expose participants to a range of increased risks, including incarceration and a higher incidence of intravenous drug use and HIV (with rates in the survey at four times the national average). No wonder respondents, when asked to list their policy priorities, threw the biggest numbers (70 percent) behind protection for transgender/gender nonconforming people from discrimination in hiring and at work. </p>
<p>Transgender people often suffer harm from the very systems designed to protect most citizens. Twenty-two percent report being harassed by police, but the problem extends beyond law enforcement. In 1995, D.C. resident Tyra Hunter <a href="http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2007/08/trya-hunter-anniversary.html">died</a> from entirely treatable injuries incurred in a car accident. First, the firefighters who arrived at the scene stopped emergency medical treatment once they cut away her clothes to discover male genitalia. (One witness reported hearing a firefighter say, "This bitch ain't no girl. ... It's a nigger, he got a dick.") Once they stopped joking around and got her to the emergency room, the doctor refused to treat her. She died there of blunt force trauma and medical negligence. Fifteen years after Hunter's death, the survey's numbers still stink: 19 percent of respondents reported being refused care because of their gender identity or expression, with even higher figures for respondents of color. Nearly 3 percent reported being attacked in emergency rooms. </p>
<p>It doesn't have to be like this. There are over a dozen states, plus 134 cities and counties that have transgender-inclusive nondiscrimination laws on the books that create protections -- and make offenders liable for violating them. For example, Hunter's mother was able to sue the District of Columbia, the firefighter, and the emergency-room physician because of D.C.'s 1997 Human Rights Act. As Lisa Mottet, one of the authors of the report and the director of NGLTF's Transgender Civil Rights Project, says, "Changing your policies and treating people with respect is important. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out how to do this with trans people. There just has to be the will to change it." </p>
<p>Of course, that's easier said than done. Nondiscrimination bills that protect transgender people face stiff opposition at both the passage and implementation stages. That's true even in D.C., which passed a transgender nondiscrimination law in 2006 and leads the country in transgender rights. "At first, the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) flatly refused to consider our suggested policy changes," said Alison Gill, an attorney for the <a href="http://dctranscoalition.wordpress.com/">D.C. Trans Coalition</a> (DCTC). "Officials were openly mocking our requests and literally taking naps during meetings." </p>
<p>Gill credits the DOC with "eventually recognizing that the protections afforded by the D.C. Human Rights Law apply even to them" and setting up a transgender housing committee -- vital in prison settings, where transgender women thrown in with male prisoners are routinely sexually assaulted. Still, the DOC won't let DCTC do trainings for their staff, fails to make inmates and staff aware of the new policies, and has blocked transgender community members from participating on the housing committee. Victories, while momentous, are not yet complete. </p>
<p>Of course, legal changes at the federal level would offer the broadest possible protections for transgender and gender nonconforming people. But don't expect them anytime soon. Discrimination against trans people is still legal in 38 states -- and against LGBT people in 29 -- and the <a href="http://www.hrc.org/issues/workplace/enda.asp">Employment Non-Discrimination Act</a> (ENDA), which would prohibit such discrimination, was never brought to a vote on the floor by the House leadership during the last Congress. This despite the fact that ENDA is, <a href="http://www.metroweekly.com/news/?ak=5852">per <i>Metro Weekly</i> reporter Chris Geidner</a>, "the longest-standing piece of legislation, in one form or another, sought by LGBT advocates." </p>
<p>ENDA was shelved by the House leadership in favor of repealing "don't ask, don't tell," and Keisling, for one, is not afraid to speculate why. ''It had to do with there being staff members in leadership who were afraid of the trans part,'' she <a href="http://www.metroweekly.com/news/?ak=5852 ">said</a>. ''And leadership stalled on it. They stalled and they stalled.'' </p>
<p>Still, Mottet, from the task force, has not given up on the power of change on the local or even individual level. "Here's one of the major take-home messages we want for people: Discrimination and the disrespect transgender people experience every day whether at home or in school or on the streets is devastating and life threatening," she says. "It's our job to make sure that the transgender people we encounter in our daily lives are treated with respect. If we all did that, this country would be transformed." </p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 04 Feb 2011 06:43:48 +0000149117 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinThe DADT Awards.http://prospect.org/article/dadt-awards
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>During two days of hearings that were sometimes so frustrating I began to refer to them as “don’t ask, don’t yell (at C-SPAN),” some players stood out for their clarity, integrity, leadership, and sheer toughness. For these bracing displays of intelligence and spine, I hereby grant the following awards:</p>
<p><em>The Straight Shooter</em> goes to Adm. <strong>Mike Mullen</strong>, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his vice chairman, Gen. <strong>James Cartwright</strong>. The former for making no bones about the fact that LGBT people have always and will always serve in the military, citing his own experience from 1968 onward. And for smacking down the first wave of the our-combat-troops-feel-funny-about-this arguments with admirable cool, saying, “There is no gray area here. We treat each other with respect, or we find another place to work. Period. Leadership matters most.” Cartwright, a Marine, kept opponents on the defensive by continually reminding them of the vast statistical gap between combat troops who didn’t think they had served with LGBT people (over half of whom perceived that there would be problems with repeal) and those who knew they had -- approval ratings in the Army and Marines are 89 percent and 84 percent, respectively.</p>
<p>To Senate Armed Services Committee Chair <strong>Carl Levin</strong>, the <em>Keeping the Heat On Award</em>: Levin was strong throughout, but his most delicious moment came when Gen. <strong>Casey</strong>, chief of the Armed Services, gravely opined that there were things that “wouldn’t get done” if the troops and their commanders had to deal with no longer expelling LGBT service members during a time of war. Levin pressed (“What things?”), and Casey folded, incapable of mentioning a single specific example. </p>
<p>To Sen. <strong>Mark Udall</strong>, the <em>"For the Record" Award</em>. In this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2m4VXqpcmg&amp;feature=player_embedded">stunning sequence</a>, Udall goes down the line of all the service chiefs, and forces them to go on record -- twice -- supporting repeal. First he has them agree that Secretary of Defense <strong>Gates</strong>’ assurance that he won’t certify the repeal until “everything has been done to get ready” alleviates their concerns. Then, in a brilliant turn that makes the service chiefs’ responses a referendum on their own leadership, he asks: “If we change this policy can your branch and the U.S. military make it work?” Their unanimous positive answers make for satisfying viewing -- and one of the only parts of these hearings you’ll want to watch over and over again. </p>
<p>And finally, the <em>Surprise the Hell Out of Me</em> award goes to Sen. <strong>Joe Lieberman</strong>. In addition to turning in a smart, sober, unpendantic peformance during both days of the hearing, Lieberman was the only participant to mention that the 14,000 service members discharged under DADT include a large number of people with special skills -- proof that the current policy hurts unit cohesion and effectiveness.</p>
<p><em>-- Nancy Goldstein</em></p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:45:14 +0000205163 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinHypocrisy and Illusions That Just Won't Quit.http://prospect.org/article/hypocrisy-and-illusions-just-wont-quit
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>The most important distinction made in this morning’s hearings by supporters of repealing "don't ask, don't tell" is about the difference between perception and experience, believing and knowing.</p>
<p>First, the gap between the perception of service members who don’t understand they’ve been serving alongside LGBT people all along, and those who do. A full 92 percent of the latter are just fine with that -- and that includes high percentages of OK-ness among active combat troops. Second, there’s the experience of the Netherlands, Britain, etc., all of whom have reported that there was plenty of fussing by straight troops before the open inclusion of LGBT service members, and virtually none afterward. </p>
<p>You’d think the Service Chiefs of Steel, particularly Generals <strong>Amos</strong> (Marines) and <strong>Casey</strong> (Army), who are the most openly opposed to repeal, might be embarrassed to be spending so much time being squishy about the perceptions of their troops when faced with what history and experience show: That repeal is a non-issue, especially when troops are engaged in combat; their minds turn to other more important issues. Then again, it’s always the toughest guys who are the biggest sissies, at least on paper, when it comes to knowingly sharing a foxhole with someone who gets it on with people of the same gender. Where’s <strong>Sharron Angle</strong> to tell Amos, Casey, and their combat troops to “man up”?</p>
<p>Today, like yesterday, what grinds most is the hypocrisy of the opponents of repeal -- the gap between the Service Chiefs’ and the Republicans’ concern about how it might affect their troops versus the actual, current effect on troops of other stressors. It’s OK to stretch the forces by forcing multiple deployments. It’s OK to stretch the forces by making up for low recruitment numbers by allowing criminals to serve beside them. It’s OK to ask the troops to fight two seemingly hopeless wars over the course of a decade with no end in sight. But asking them to knowingly share showers with LGBT people is one toke over the line.</p>
<p><em>-- Nancy Goldstein</em></p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 19:03:31 +0000205157 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinOur Touch-y Feel-y Troops.http://prospect.org/article/our-touch-y-feel-y-troops
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>There was never any question that Republicans, led by <b>John McCain</b>, would kick up a fuss during today’s Senate <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/02/dont-ask-dont-tell-hearings_n_790941.html">hearings</a> on whether to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." The only question had been what their strategy would be -- what to do in light of the recently released report by the Department of Defense Working Group, which concluded that DADT should be repealed, particularly since 70 percent of the troops surveyed couldn’t care less.</p>
<p>Basically, Republicans complained that the military and Congress "need more time" before going ahead with repealing DADT – and that the decision to repeal DADT, unlike any other policy that applies to the troops, should be made via a referendum in which every solider has a chance to express his or her feelings. McCain, the guy who picked his 2008 running mate in 15 minutes and made no big fuss about the importance of counting every vote in 2000, said that he wants more time to read the report -- and more reports after that. Along with three other Republicans, he said that while not enough troops answered the survey – there was “only” a 28 percent response rate -- we should consider the high percentages of combat troops (Marines in particular) who opposed repeal. Sen. <b>Lindsay Graham</b> suggested that military chiefs should ask better questions and listen better when it comes to the people they serve. (The Senate, not so much.)</p>
<p>It was a touching embrace of lesbian feminist collective politics: The soldier-who-respects-the-chain-of-command-and-does-what-he’s-told is now concerned that too few soldiers got to express their feelings. Of course, all of the Republicans who suddenly care about the feelings of our troops should get some kind of commendation for hypocrisy: They voiced no such concerns when it came time to rush them into Iraq without sufficient justification for war or enough body armor and have made no move to stop multiple forced deployments or address the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, unemployment, and homelessness among those who return.</p>
<p>That said, a profile in courage award should go to <b>Susan Collins</b>, who broke ranks with her Republican colleagues to state her support for repeal and to note that one does not poll the troops when it comes to other policy decisions. Tomorrow, the committee will hear from the five heads of the military branches, including those representing the combat troops whose objection to repeal provided the Republicans with so much of their thunder today.</p>
<p><em>-- Nancy Goldstein</em></p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:22:57 +0000205146 at http://prospect.orgNancy GoldsteinA McCain Thanksgivinghttp://prospect.org/article/mccain-thanksgiving
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p><i>'Twas the night 'fore Thanksgiving, and all through the house<br />
The McCain clan's divided -- dad, daughter, and spouse.</i> </p>
<p>Thanksgiving is going to be a little tense over at the McCains' this year, where "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) is putting a strain on the family. Sen. McCain has emerged as the lead opponent to allowing LGBT people to serve openly in the military; his daughter and wife have both publicly stated their support for the law's repeal. If this were a typical year, the McCains could, like most families, stick to the standard challenges: the difficulty of bringing children from two sets of marriages and their families to the same table; the impossibility of having every dish come out at the same time yet still be hot. </p>
<p>But this November is different for this family of politicos. The Pentagon's official DADT report -- commissioned to see how integrating the military would affect troop morale and military readiness -- is due out Nov. 30, and the portions already leaked <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/10/AR2010111007502.html">suggest</a> that it will call for DADT's eventual repeal. Meaning that come Thursday, the discomfort at the McCains' won't be limited to that awkward moment when everyone pretends not to notice that the man of the house can't carve. </p>
<p>Ever since his failed presidential bid, McCain has devolved from war hero and maverick to a character more like the deranged uncle in <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i> who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, roaring and charging at every imaginary threat, toy pistols ablaze. So it no longer appears to matter to the senator that he went on record four years ago <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15330717/ns/msnbc_tv-%20hardball_with_chris_matthews/page/2/">saying</a> that he would support the military's top brass if they ever did what the leaked Pentagon report suggests they intend to do. Instead, he's gearing up to lead the filibuster against DADT's repeal even though murmurings of support for repeal from members of his own party -- including such <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/11/senator_john_ensign_may_suppor.html">moral luminaries as John Ensign</a> -- suggest now might be a good time to stop reflexively opposing all things Obama. </p>
<p>Much has been made of the fact that the senator's feisty 26-year-old daughter, a columnist for <i>The Daily Beast</i>, breaks with her father on this issue despite also being a Republican. (Meghan described her father's opposition as "embarrassing" while <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/39732134#39732134">speaking with Rachel Maddow last month</a>.) Ditto for wife Cindy's sedition when she appeared in a public service announcement a few weeks back <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhFZ7qjrw5U&amp;feature=player_embedded">explicitly</a> <a href="http://gay.americablog.com/2010/11/cindy-mccain-does-video-opposing-dadt.html">linking</a> the low self-esteem of LGBT youth to political leaders who, er, tell them that "they can't serve our country openly." (She <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/CindyhM1/status/3238304799526912">retracted</a> via Twitter 24 hours later.) But the McCain women's views are typical of people their age and gender, regardless of political affiliation. </p>
<p>While 75 percent of the respondents to a 2010 ABC News/<i>Washington Post</i> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021104873.html">poll</a> said they supported allowing gays to serve openly, there were significant demographic differences, with men (65 percent) and seniors (69 percent) far less likely than women (84 percent) and young adults (81 percent under 30) to say that gays should be allowed to serve if they have disclosed their sexual orientation. In short, the McCain family's situation is not unique: These gender and generational divisions will make for uncomfortable Thanksgiving moments in households all over the U.S. wherever someone's foolish enough to turn on the news for a mixed crowd. </p>
<p>These same divisions also fuel the Kabuki theatrics now playing in Washington over DADT. The actors? Congress -- where the median age in the overwhelmingly male Senate that has repeatedly failed to repeal DADT is 63. A White House led by a risk-averse 49-year-old guy who has surrounded himself with similarly minded 50-plus guys. Then there's Defense Secretary Robert Gates (age 67), who warned of "<a href="http://enormousconsequences.com/ ">enormous consequences</a>" last month when, heaven forfend, a federal judge struck down the ban before the Pentagon's report could come out and lend yet more political cover for our decision-avoiding decision-makers. </p>
<p>But what about the troops, the folks -- fully <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/pastinson/us-military-active-duty-demographic-profile-presentation">half of whom are 22-30</a> -- who are actually going to have to live with this decision? Via the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/10/AR2010111007502.html">leaked report</a>: "More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent." </p>
<p>This should come as no surprise to John <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15330717/ns/msnbc_tv-%20hardball_with_chris_matthews/page/2/">I-talk-to-young-people-all-the-time</a> McCain; the age group polled has <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1231-09.htm">consistently held these beliefs</a> over the past decade. What's more, if he and the rest of our nation's leaders learned how to use YouTube, they'd find it full of evidence that our troops dig the very culture their elders are trying to protect them from. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHXgFU7qNI">Here</a>'s a remake of Lady Gaga's "Telephone" featuring troops in Afghanistan popping moves to club music while wearing costumes worthy of Halloween in the West Village. And <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya9iFYmdYp4">here</a>'s a 22-year-old Iraq-based specialist's remake of Kesha's "Blah Blah Blah." "If the Army Goes Gay" <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/67399/index3.html">features</a> all of his straight National Guard buds spoofing a post-DADT military as they unabashedly cop poses straight from queer dance floors and porn. </p>
<p>The disconnect between the pre-Stonewall old guys who lead our military and the already-over-it younger people they're making decisions for is less amusing in light of its implications for troop readiness and safety. According to the General Accounting Office, as of 2003, the military had <a href="http://www.sldn.org/pages/about-dadt">discharged</a> more than 750 mission-critical service members under DADT and more than 320 with skills in important languages such as Arabic, Korean, and Farsi. Meaning that the Marines in this combination dance/combat video go <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPs4bTcyfFI&amp;feature=related">kicking down doors</a> without the benefit of someone who can first call out to the people on the other side in a language they might understand. </p>
<p>Not that what the troops think or what would best support them actually matters in this charade. The political process still tilts heavily toward appeasing the 62-year-old men who make decisions, as opposed to the vast majority of younger people who have to live with the consequences. </p>
<p>Chew on that, Sen. McCain.</p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:08:09 +0000149017 at http://prospect.orgNancy Goldstein